SchoolHouse Rock Remembered

Every Saturday morning between 1973 and 1985, a classroom of
imagination defying enormity was assembled on ABC, run by a small
cadre of renegade Madison Avenue ad men. Class sessions were
short but intense-squeezed between episodes of Scooby Doo and
LaffOlympics and Underoos met the dress code. No one assigned
homework, no one slapped your knuckles with a yardstick, no one
beat you up for your milk money. The institution of learning
was called Schoolhouse Rock, and if you can recite the
Preamble of the Constitution by rote and know the function of
a conjunction, you probably attended faithfully.

The series of animated cartoon shorts-41 segments in all-used
appealingly goofy characters, catchy tunes and repetition (airing
as often as seven times each weekend) to teach Fruity Pebbles
consumers about multiplication tables, the parts of speech, American
history, science and computer mechanics. Schoolhouse Rock's
genesis took place in 1971 when David McCall, chairman of big-time
New York ad agency McCaffrey & McCall, noticed that his son
could sing every Beatles and Stones lyric ever recorded but couldn't
handle simple multiplication tables. His solution was simple:
Link math with contemporary music and the kids will breeze through
school on a song. To implement his idea, McCall turned to his
agency's creative staff, who passed the songwriting chores over
to a traditional Broadway jingle house with less than brilliant
results. Fortunately, agency co-ercive director George Newall
suggested they hire Bob Dorough, a Texas jazz musician with a
knack for infectious grooves. The composer/pianist accepted the
mission with great enthusiasm, plowing through his daughter's
arithmetic books and plunking out notes until he'd created the
soothing ballad "Three Is a Magic Number."

McCall loved the results, but being an advertising executive,
he demanded statistical proof that the world at large would love
it too. Only after test audiences (consisting of elementary-school
students and university professors, who verified the accuracy
of each song released) gave the tune a thumbs-up did McCall approve
the release of "Three Is a Magic Number" as a phonograph
record, which, along with several other songs, eventually was
released by Capitol Records under the title Multiplication
Rock.

The ad men hoped to secure a workbook tie-in deal to go along
with the record, but when that fell through, they decided to do
an animated adaptation using their own money. M&M's other
creative director, Tom Yohe, sat down at his kitchen table to
draw up some storyboards, and "Three Is a Magic Number"
was transformed into sound and motion for the sum of "$15,000
or some ridiculous amount like that," says Schoolhouse
Rock producer Radford Stone.

The next major hurdle involved finding a market for the spot.
At the time, ABC was devoting a lot of time to fretting about
the naughtiness and violence of their programming and had begun
to buckle under parental and political pressure to clean up their
act. Of particular concern was the commercial content of its
Saturday-morning lineup. Enter Radford Stone proposing a series
of educational and otherwise socially redeeming cartoons.

ABC's head of children's programming at the time, a guy named
Michael Eisner (yes, that Michael Eisner), and his animation advisor,
Chuck Jones, fell prey to the charms of "Three Is a Magic
Number." They gave the agency the go ahead to produce segments
for the rest of the multiplication tables-with the bulk of animation
provided by Phil Kimmelman & Associates, a production company
specializing in animation for advertising. The network, however,
didn't want to surrender advertising revenue every time they taught
a few million kids the answer to three times six. McCaffrey &
McCall had a solution. They convinced another one of their clients,
General Foods, to sponsor Schoolhouse Rock, thus giving
GF the good name and ABC the big bucks. In a further triumph
of innovative business strategies, Eisner instructed Hollywood
animation studios like Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros. to cut
three-minute modules from their shows. That way, ABC could use
the extra time to run the Schoolhouse Rock segments, and
when the shows went into syndication, the three-minute modules
could be restored. The studios grumbled, but even then Michael
Eisner had the muscle to push his wishes through. With all the
behind-the-scenes deals out of the way, Schoolhouse Rock premiered
on the weekend of January 6-7, 1973, with "My Hero Zero,"
"Elementary, My Dear," "Three Is a Magic Number"
and "The Four-Legged Zoo."

George Newall remembers the original recording sessions with
fondness, remarking, "Going to those sessions was wonderful,
because in those days, real guys came in and played real instruments,
and New York had the best session players in the world. Nowadays,
instead of a roomful of musicians, you've got three guys standing
around with Proteus modules."

Grammar Rock succeeded Multiplication Rock, drilling
the parts of speech into youngsters' heads. Joining the creative
team for the new segments was Lynn Ahrens, a secretary at the
ad agency. One day, Newall spied her walking through the office
with a guitar case, and when he asked her if she played, she performed
for him on the spot impressing him so much that the agency made
her a copywriter. Not long after, she wrote and sang on "A
Noun Is a Person, Place or Thing" and several other classic
SHR spots. Since then, Ahrens has gone on to earn five
Tony nominations for her work on the Broadway musicals Once
on This Island and My Favorite Year.

By 1976, a patriotic fervor had gripped the nation. Kids were
hoarding bicentennial quarters and riding around on red, white
and blue Huffys. Schoolhouse Rock responded with segments
about American history, which they produced underthe banner America
Rock, and which ABC, for reasons mysterious, called History
Rock. The lessons became more ambitious, now addressing such
topics as Colonial military prowess ("The Shot Heard 'Round
the World"), the concept of Manifest Destiny ("Elbow
Room"), and women's rights ("Sufferin' Till Suffage").

"Mother Necessity," in particular, proved a logistical
nightmare. Says Bob Dorough, "We used all of our Schoolhouse
Rocksingers, and we had to record 20 seconds in Los Angeles, then
fly to New York to record another five seconds there, and so on."
The result was a mixed jumble of melodies linked by a two-line
chorus. Not that the spot wasn't as intluential on society as
the rest of SHR. A Radio City Music Hall show celebrating
the nation's utter greatness saw the Rockettes dancing behind
projected scenes from SHR, including an image culled trom
"Mother Necessity"-a towering smokestack with Tom Yohe's
name painted boldly up its side. "Each letter was about
the size of my head," reports Yohe.

Perhaps even more memorable was "I'm Just a Bill,"
in which a depressed little scroll of paper is dragged through
the labyrinthine legislative process by which a bill becomes law.
Not surprisingly, a number of government agencies and lobbyists
asked for copies to educate their own staffs.

Although no one found any controversy in times tables or parts
of speech, ABC did have a problem with one America Rock segment,
"Three Ring Government," which dealt with the system
of checks and balances among the three branches of government.
Skittish in dealings with the FCC, ABC didn't want to risk insulting
bureaucrats with "Three Ring's" circus motif, and the
segment didn't air until several years after it had been produced.

Science Rock followed next, exploring such topics as the
human circulatory system, depletion of the Earth's energy resources,
and electrodynamics. One song frequently requested on this series
was "Telegraph Line," about the nervous system. "Most
of the requests came from medical schools," Tom Yohe recalls,
"which doesn't give me a lot of confidence in our medical
system. They wanted to show it to first-year medical students.
It explained in a very simple, graphic way how the nervous system
works."

The final Schoolhouse Rock series, Scooter Computer and
Mr. Chips, was something of a departure from the previous format.
The four segments feature SHR's only recurring characters,
Scooter Computer (a fairly dorky-looking skateboard rat) and Mr.
Chips (a roller-skating terminal about as clunky as the kind
Matthew Broderick used in War Games). Its only reason
for being, according to Radford Stone, was "the misapprehension
that children have a phobia about computers." Stone barely
considers Scooter part of SHR, and, in fact, none of the
SHR creative team seem to recall who contributed what to
Scooter. And since the Schoolhouse Rock archives, including
the animation cels, were destroyed after it went off the air,
no one is sure what the Scooter segments' official titles are.
"No one remembers them," says Stone.

Over the course of its 12-year run, Schoolhouse Rock received
many accolades from parents, professional educators and television
insiders, even winning four Emmys for Outstanding Children's Programming.
But by 1985, ABC's commitment to quality children's television
had waned. Those attentive to such matters might have seen it
coming, for during the previous year, ABC had begun sneaking spots
that featured Tiger Beat faves Menudo in place of Schoolhouse
Rock segments. And by 1985, ABC had become smitten with the
dentally-endowed Mary Lou Retton and replaced Schoolhouse Rock
altogether with Reton's exercise spots. Mary Lou only lasted
a year ("Kids don't want to sit there eating their Sugar
Frosted Flakes and suddenly break a sweat," opines Yohe),
but the reign ofSchoolhouse Rock was over. Over, at least, temporarily.

In 1987, Golden Book Video released Schoolhouse Rock on
tape. But things weren't quite the same. Actress Cloris Leachman
and a litter of annoying, singing children now introduced the
timeless segments, and to make room for Cloris and the gang, some
spots, including "Three Ring Government," "The
Good Eleven" and "Little Twelve Toes" were not
included on the videos. Tom Yohe deeply regrets the omissions.
Regarding Cloris Leachman, he says, "She's just hideous.
She is the antithesis of what we wanted to do."

In reference to the Golden Book Video releases in general, Dorough
states, "The quality is poor and there is also some new,
inappropriate and inferior material not written by me and more
or-less sung by Cloris Leachman and some kids." Dorough also
makes a point of noting that he "hasn't gotten any royalties
from these videos yet."

Fortunately, the news gets better. Last year ABC once again made
room for Schoolhouse Rock in their Saturday morning lineup,
initiating the minds of another generation. And
orders have been placed for three new segments. "Busy P's,"
which fills us in on the part of speech
long missing from Grammar Rock-prepositions-premiered in
October 1993. December saw the introduction of "The Tale
of Mr. Morton," a Lynn Ahrens composition about subject
and predicate. A third, currently untitled segment promises to
teach kids the value of the dollar. "It was originally supposed
to be about the deficit," says George Newall, "but it
was too complicated a subject to take on. It's too bad, really.
I was thinking about all the PR possibilities. We could have
taken it to Washington and maybe taught Bill Clinton something."

Newall likens the recording sessions for the new spots to a "lovefest."
The old creative team, from Tom Yohe and Bob Dorough to Jack Sheldon
and the original backup singers, were reunited to work on something
that began as a side project and evolved into one of the best-known
and best-loved television series ever. "More kids saw Schoolhouse
Rock than ever watched Sesame Street," says Newall
with an amazed laugh. "And the big irony is that it was
all done by a bunch of ad guys in their spare time."